Hey Guys, back with another short installment of Technical Difficulties! Gotta say. Writing the tutorial out is tedious. There are just so many background details going on. I can't wait to get to free play. But hopefully this part answers some of the questions from the first installment!
Thank you so much to everyone who commented on the first chapter! I was surprised to actually get a following, like, at all, for something that was supposed to be a one-shot.
Danny's eyes snapped up from the unyielding rope, taking in his company for the first time.
They all looked like something out of—what was that show Jazz liked? The Last Kingdom? Danny's nose crinkled. Between their long hair, rugged attire and the smell, these people sure fit the bill.
Danny focused more closely on the speaker, a hulk of a blond that he immediately dubbed "Thor". Only to blink in bewilderment as white letters appeared over the man's chest.
"Ralof? Is that some kind of pasta?"
Butterflies bombarded Danny's stomach like flies trapped in a glass as he realized he'd quipped on instinct.
Great going, Fenton! Let's piss off your only possible allies when you can't use your powers. Stellar plan!
Scanning his audience, Danny's eyes narrowed suspiciously. The other three hadn't responded. At all. Almost as if they hadn't heard him.
Not even the cart's driver seemed fazed by the question.
This was getting weirder and weirder.
"Damn you Stormcloaks!" Danny's eyes darted right at the outburst, landing on a brunet's thin face and pointy chin, trying hard not to stare at what looked like a cut-to-size burlap sack shirt. "Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn't been looking for you, I could've stolen that horse and been half way to Hammerfell. You there." The man—wait, he had a word too; were Ralof and Lokir names?—turned to Danny. "You and me—we shouldn't be here. It's these—"
Lokir's words disappeared, his mouth still moving as a much louder, ubiquitous voice drowned out all other sound. "Having fun, Ghost Child~?"
Danny glared up at the sky, not willing to repeat his earlier mistake quite yet.
"Don't worry. They can't hear you."
That was all the encouragement Danny needed. "What the hell, Technus?! What did you do!?"
"Your tech-savvy friend has promised me the world-ending device known as Tomogachi if I keep you busy for a few days. So I decided: why not? I owe you for my little trip to Level Zero."
Trip to Level Zero? Was this….a video game?
Bizarre as it was, that made a lot of sense.
But—
"Tucker did this?!" Danny heard the whine creep into his voice, even as irritation at his friend churned in his gut. "Why the heck would he do that?"
What could be so important that Tucker would go to Technus for help? Did this have something to do with his parent's annual Fight?
"Ah-bah-bah! That would be telling. I don't do that anymore."
Danny had to bite his lip hard to stop from commenting on how much the other ghost had already spilled.
"Let's see…stereotypical elf, angry elf, pompous elf, lizard, cat, human….."
"What are you doing?!"
"Oooo—orc. I can work with that!"
"HEY, STOP IT!"
"Perk trees? Those sound helpful. I better fix that."
"LISTEN TO ME! YOU BETTER LET ME OUT OR I'LL—!"
"Oh look here! The box says there's over a thousand hours of game play! That should be fun. I'm thinking you can handle…fifty percent completion?"
Technus expected him to log five hundred hours to get out of here?!
Danny struggled helplessly, butt glued to the seat by some invisible force.
A shadow darkened the wagon as it trundled left, the stone and wood of a bridged wall briefly blocking the sky before giving way to a small town that smelled of day-old campfire. When sunlight returned, the technophile's words vanished, replaced once again by voices Danny now recognized as NPC's.
"Goddamnit Technus! This is absolute bull—"
"Look at him, General Tullius the Military Governor."
Danny's eyes snapped to Ralof at the interruption. Still agitated over this whole fiasco, he hissed, "Look at who?! If you're gonna say something that sounds important, Thor, you can't just vaguely gesture with your head!" Quick-scanning around the thatched-roof buildings where several people loitered, the irate teen huffed, then craned his neck back and eyed the guards atop the rampart.
Nope. Not them either.
A whinny caught Danny's attention and his gaze dropped to where a grey-haired figure sat astride a gingerbread gelding. "General Tullius" floated over the man's back, partially obscuring a blood red hood that hung loosely over narrow shoulders. Across from the high-ranking officer was a humanoid lizard and another rider—this one yellow-skinned and pointy eared.
"And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves. I bet they had something to do with this."
Oh great. He had no idea what kind of game this was. It was obviously fantasy based, but was it puzzle oriented? Hack and slash? Plot heavy? Should he be paying attention to the politics? Memorizing people? (If so: gross.) Or should he be escaping right now? It was possible he was trapped in the wagon by something Technus did, rather than some game mechanic.
"This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in."
Wait. Ralof was still monologuing like Danny was supposed to be here. This was probably the tutorial.
"Funny, when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe."
Used to?
"—Who are they, Daddy? Where are they going?"
"You need to go inside, little cub."
Thin, wispy hair on Danny's neck stood on end as he cast about for the source of the new voices.
"Why? I want to watch the soldiers."
"Inside the house. Now."
Danny just managed a glimpse of the child's back before it disappeared into one of the residences and a stocky, middle-aged man shut the door, blocking it with his body like some grim-faced sentry.
By the time the wagon rolled the rest of the way around the bend and leveled out into a small courtyard, a frown had overtaken Danny's face.
"Gotta say, not a fan of the vibes he—" The already bumpy ride hit a particularly uplifted cobblestone and Danny's spine jarred, forcing him to clench his teeth over the last word.
A moment later the cart eased to a stop.
Armored people loitered about, their skin tones coming in variations of white, flaxen and tawny. Most of the paler, Nordic looking men—Imperials?—wore a uniform of sorts, but the others seemed to have dressed themselves, their clothes a motley of styles.
Beyond the crowd, a sizable stone keep—lookout—turret thingy? loomed, throwing a massive shadow over most of the dirt field and its inhabitants.
"Why are we stopping?" There was fear in Lokir's voice even as a guard shouted "Get these prisoners out of the carts! Move it!"
Answering dread writhed in Danny's stomach like a cup of pre-fish-bait worms, not at all soothed when Ralof answered "Why do you think? End of the line."
Shit.
It was like a dating sim. He'd made the wrong "choice" by staying on the wagon and was about to get the bad ending.
Did…Danny have lives? Was death game over?
"Let's go. Shouldn't keep the gods waiting for us."
"Yeah, no thanks, Thor. Pretty sure we don't share the same gods, soooo…"
Leaning forward with a grunt, Danny strained as hard as he could against the floor. Creaking knees and planks were the only result, and his face gained a panicked edge.
Why did his legs suddenly feel so weak?
"No! Wait! We're not rebels!" Lokir pleaded, the brunet's voice grating on Danny's own frayed nerves. And yet somehow, it didn't piss him off nearly as much as having his previously impotent legs suddenly force him to a stand. "You've got to tell them! We weren't with you! This is a mistake!"
"Face your death with some courage, thief," Ralof admonished, pushing to his feet behind Danny as the teen jerkily shuffled toward the end of the wagon.
"Okay, wow; ya dick!" Scowling, Danny gracelessly dropped off the back step and onto the frozen earth below. "I can kinda see why you're getting sent to the chopping block." A second later, the boy's blue eyes widened and he frantically searched the guards.
There.
A scary-looking dude stood behind the main crowd, idling at the base of the turret in full dungeon torturer attire, executioner's mask included. Near his fur boots and the butt of a long axe were a literal block of stone and a wooden crate coated in dark stains.
Danny's eyes subconsciously lurched down to a pair of wrists that were still stinging.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy SHIT.
"Step toward the block when we call your name. One at a time." The gruff female's words ratcheted his anxiety even higher.
"OR, now here me out, we just NOT find out what decapitation feels like today!" Danny shouted in response, head thrashing when his upper body abruptly seized up.
Tuning out a grumbled remark from Ralof and what sounded like names being called in the background, Danny put everything he had into trying to summon his powers, grasping for a cold in his chest that just wasn't there.
Sudden movement on his left broke his concentration.
"ARCHERS!"
Was that Lokir?
An arrow thwiped from a nearby bow and Danny's heart stuttered.
"Anyone else feel like running?"
Oh good. So his options were decapitation or an arrow through the chest.
Fan-flippin-tastic.
Danny felt his attention forced back to his front when the man who'd been calling names demanded, "Wait. You there. Step forward."
Traitorous legs complying, the boy slogged autonomously over to the thick-necked soldier—Hadvar (seriously, what was with this naming convention?)—as the Imperial consulted a brown, leather tome. Without much choice, Danny waited, unable to even lift his arm when a white-muzzled horse on Hadvar's left snorted into his face.
"Oh gross! Plegh! Ptttffllllt," Danny sputtered before attempting to wipe his lips on a shoulder.
Hadvar paid no mind, running a quill along the side of the ledger as if looking for something. A second later, his clean-shaven cheeks pulled into a frown and he raised his deep set eyes to Danny.
"Who are you?"
Don't forget to follow and comment! I'm pretty much just continuing this story because people want me to (although I have ended up with a 25 page google doc full of notes for the magic system because I am a special snowflake). Hahaha.